Toward a National Hungarian Army: The Military Compromise of 1868 and Its Consequences

Abstract

In discussing the Ausgleich of 1867 historians generally focus on the complex political and economic arrangements and pay little attention to the military controversy over the problem of restructuring the Habsburg army. Yet this problem almost prevented conclusion of the political agreement and greatly endangered its implementation. Count Julius Andrassy, one of the leading Hungarian negotiators, called it the “sword of Damocles suspended over our heads,” and the common war minister, Franz Baron Kuhn, believed that “the future existence of the monarchy” depended on “a successful solution of the army question”.